Kolkata Knight Riders made history on the night of May 26 when they beat Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL 2024 final to clinch their third title and first trophy in 10 years.
KKR repeated history by winning the IPL title in Chennai, exactly 12 years after their first trophy win at the MA Chidambaram stadium.
KKR's champion support staff
And while mentor Gautam Gambhir is deservedly receiving the maximum praise for KKR's dominant run in IPL 2024, but head coach Chandrakant Pandit and his support staff should be given equal credit for the same.
Chandrakant Pandit - Head Coach
Former India cricketer Chandrakant Pandit became the second coach from the country to win the IPL title. Ashish Nehra was the first to achieve the feat when he won IPL 2023 with Gujarat Titans.
But Pandit's immediate success as a head coach in the IPL shouldn't come as a surprise as he's won the Ranji Trophy a whopping 7 times as coach.
The 62-year-old became a legend in the Indian cricket fraternity after guiding Mumbai to 4 Ranji Trophy triumphs in 2002, 2003, 2015 & 2016.
Pandit then switched over to Vidarbha and guided them to Ranji Trophy victories in 2018 and 2019 before winning it with Madhya Pradesh in 2022.
Abhishek Nayar - Assistant Coach
Another person who played a massive role in KKR's success was assistant coach Abhishek Nayar, who joined the team in 2018. He is also the head coach of KKR's sister team - Trinbago Knight Riders in the Caribbean Premier League.
The former India player runs a cricket academy in Mumbai where he trains aspiring cricketers and has also helped the likes of Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer, Shubman Gill and Dinesh Karthik when they were going through a rough patch in their careers.
Mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy hailed Nayar's contribution to KKR after the final by crediting him for developing the core Indian strength in the squad.
"All I can think right now is of the person who built this Indian core: Abhishek Nayar. 'Please come here'," Chakravarathy said and was immediately backed up by teammate Venkatesh Iyer.
"As Varun mentioned, Abhishek Nayar deserves all the credit in the world. Some contributions go unnoticed, I want to make sure they don't. This guy deserves all the credit in the world for the way he has been working for this franchise," Iyer added.
Bharat Arun - Bowling Coach
The biggest highlight for KKR this season was the success rate of their six main bowlers, who picked up wickets regularly in almost every match.
5 out of the top 15 bowlers in IPL 2024 belonged to KKR. Varun was their leading wicket-taker with 21 scalps followed by Andre Russell (19), Harshit Rana (19), Sunil Narine (17) and Mitchell Starc (17).
There's a famous saying in cricket - 'batters win you matches but bowlers win you tournaments', and KKR's title triumph is the biggest example of this saying.
All thanks to Bharat Arun's guidance, the same man who helped form India's lethal Test bowling unit of Jasprit Bumrah, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Mohammad Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav.
Ryan ten Doeschate - Fielding Coach
The former KKR all-rounder became the team's fielding coach in 2022. The recently-retired Dutch star has completely transformed KKR's ground fielding over the last three years.
If you look at the stats from IPL 2024, there are 3 KKR players in the list of cricketers with the most catches. Shreyas Iyer is 3rd on the list with 10 followed by Sunil Narine and Ramandeep Singh, who are joint-7th with 8 grabs each.
Also, Phil Salt was the tournament's third-best wicketkeeper with 12 dismissals thanks to Tendo's help.
